Hi, current SLP grad student here. 1) As a fellow introvert, I feel your pain about not having many natural opportunities to practice communication. I think it’s very self-aware of you to realize the lack of functional communication situations/partners is a big issue here, in terms of therapy progress. This may not be useful if you find yourself not stuttering doing it, but what about randomized video chat sites like Omegle or chatroulette or whatever? Just 5 or 10 minutes a day. You could cycle through as many partners as you want or simply leave and never have to worry about seeing a particular person ever again. Also, avoid self-checkouts like the plague, then intentionally start a conversation with the cashier. Snatch up any opportunity to have small conversations IRL here and there throughout the day. 2) I don’t stutter so I don’t want to speak too much on this (looks like other people here have already done a great job) but man, I can’t tell you how many professors I’ve known who have a stutter. You may think this is a natural consequence of my field, but I’d argue the situation for them is just as paradoxical as it would be if they were education professors, if not more so. I’ve known of a few practicing SLPs who stutter as well, believe it or not. People will hire you. Like someone else suggested, is there a particular age of student you feel most comfortable around? How did your student-teaching experiences go? Did they kick you out and banish you from the school grounds forever for the terrible crime of stuttering? Surely they didn’t. I saw someone else on this sub say something like, in a job interview, they won’t mention it until they stutter, at which point they’ll casually just say something like “oh btw excuse my stutter, I’ve been doing it my whole life” and then just drop it to show it’s no BFD. I think that’s brilliant. I’m sorry your parents seem to think this is entirely within your control, and you’re just continuing to do it to, what, be difficult? Make your own life more difficult? Makes 0 sense, don’t let them get to you.